In the Part 1 of this series, we discussed how Mobility and flexible workstyle investments are so integral in Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 Operating Systems. Today I'll talk about the additional layer of services which are essentials in delivering successful Enterprise Mobility Solutions in an organization.

Identity and Access - With the emergence of Public Enterprise Cloud Applications like Safesforce.com, Dropbox, Jive, Amazon and more and of course Microsoft Services like Office 365, OneDrive for Business and Yammer, more and more organizations are now adopting public SAAS (Software as a Service) applications instead of writing their own LOB applications. When Organizations right their own LOB applications they mostly integrate it with Active Directory to avoid having multiple credentials and identities inside the organizations of an employee. Users access these LOB applications using a single credentials in the form of Active Directory domain User and Password which is the same for logon to their PCs and other systems.

Public Cloud SAAS applications often comes with their own Identity Services and then it creates a huge problem of having multiple Identities and credentials for each applications. So as an employee I would be using one credentials to access Internal Applications and different credentials for External SAAS Applications. Things gets worst when there are multiple SAAS applications you have to work with.

There is a strong need of an Hybrid Identity which allows you to have consistent persona inside your organization and outside with public SAAS Applications. So I should be using the same credentials to access Internal LOB App to raise my expense report and same credentials to access Salesforce.com. This concept of Hybrid Identify will also enhance users productivity as they don't have to manage and remember multiple credentials.

For IT team, it would be easier for them to manage one user credential and enables streamlining of provisioning and granting access to different applications depending upon users persona, roles and responsibilities in the organization.

Modern Device Management – As employees are now bringing their own devices and accessing internal & Enterprise Cloud applications and carry sensitive information in those emails, apps and files, there is a strong need for doing some basic device management of personal Devices. Since its BYOD and Personal Devices, organization may not be looking at putting in-depth restrictions on those devices like blocking the camera or SD Card but pushing some basic security policies like PIN and password policy should be Okay. It should be reasonable to expect that devices on which corporate data is residing it should not be naked (without PIN/Password protection) which anybody can pick and start interacting with the device, Apps and data on it.

With Modern device management its also important that Employees has all that on their devices which makes them real productive on the Go for e.g Native LOB Apps for Devices, VPN Profiles, Email Profiles, Corporate WiFi profiles etc. All these and more can be automatically provisioned on the device as and when they enrol their device to access corporate applications.

In Corporate Owned Devices which are given to employees to do specialised tasks, Organization may want to have more control on the devices like disabling the camera, SD card, Access to browser etc.

Information and Data Protection – BYOD and enabling access to corporate applications and data on personal devices does boost employee’s productivity but it does pose acute threat in leaking and lost of those sensitive, confidential data to wrong hands. In a successful Enterprise Mobility strategy Information and Data protection is a strong requirement. Often with the solutions available in the market, data security solutions are often really restricting which in return reduces flexibility, user experience and employee productivity. there is a need to strike the right balance with protecting the data on personal devices at the same time keep user experience and productivity intact.

In the next post, we’ll talk about how Microsoft is catering to these critical services over an above the investments in the Operating Systems.

Enterprise mobility is more than a set of services which an organizations can deploy to enable a rich mobile work environment. There is a huge play of the Operating system platform you use to enable Mobility directly from the platform itself.

Today I am going to talk about how Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 is built on a strong foundation of this whole philosophy of Mobility, While Windows 8.1 has been around for a while and lot has been said and written about its capabilities but it doesn't hurt to review them again and how it enables a FlexibleWorkstyle or Mobility. If you are an IT PRO, it will help you take steps towards thinking about your Enterprise Mobility Strategy and enable your users to be more productive on the go by harnessing these capabilities out of the box.

Windows Tablets and 2 in 1 Devices: With Windows 8.1 now powering Tablets and 2 in 1 Devices (Hybrids) Computing has gone to a whole new level. Now you don't need a place to sit and a desk to place your mouse and keyboard to be productive. With these devices with Modern apps and touch optimized Interface of Windows 8.1 you can be productive while on the move (even when you are standing in the queue waiting to order your favourite coffee at Starbucks) and still is business ready so corporate IT teams can control it. In short, Windows 8.1 is the Business Personal device.

Windows To Go : Windows To Go is an enterprise feature of Windows 8.1 that enables the creation of a Windows To Go workspace that can be booted from a USB-connected external drive on any PCs that meet the Windows 7 or Windows 8 certification requirements, regardless of the operating system running on the PC. Windows To Go workspaces can use the same image enterprises use for their desktops and laptops and can be managed the same way. So next time you are traveling to your branch office and you are certain to find a PC Hardware, you can now travel light with your Windows to Go drive along with all your applications, customizations, data and settings.

DirectAccess: Windows 8.1 Enterprise provides capabilities like DirectAccess which allows you to seamlessly connect to corporate network without launching VPN client and dialing in. As and when you connect to a Internet connection whether at home or at public hotspot you’ll securely get connected to your corporate network. Trust meyou’ll love this confidence of being “Always on LAN” while sitting at your favourite coffee shop.

Bitlocker and Bitlocker to Go : “Superpowers (read Mobility) often comes with great responsibility..!”. Responsibility to protect corporate sensitive and confidential data from leak and theft. With Bitlocker in Windows 8.1 PRO and Enterprise encrypts your hard disk and prevents data loss in the event of device theft or Loss. Bitlocker to Go allows you to also encrypt your mobile HDD and USB Flash drives while carrying sensitive data. I am not sure about you but I tend to loose those tiny little things all the time…

Workplace Join: A Windows 8.1 PC was either domain joined or not. If it was a member of the domain, the user could access corporate resources (if permissioned) and IT could control the PC through group policy and other mechanisms. With the advent of BYOD, Employees are now more comfortable with working on the devices of their choice even if it means non-corporate approved devices. Workplace Join allows a middle ground between all or nothing access, allowing a user to work on the device of their choice and still have access to corporate resources IT administrators now have the ability to offer finer-grained control to corporate resources. If a user registers their device, IT can grant some access while still enforcing some governance parameters on the device. One of the benefit of Workplace Join is single sign-on and access to corporate data and apps. Who likes entertaining multiple login prompts?

Oh did I mention, Workplace join is now not limited just to Windows 8.1. You can now Workplace join your Windows 7 and iOS and gain secure access to corporate resources.

Work Folders: With most of us now have more than 1 devices in our lives, there are more reasons than ever to have our documents and data synced across all those devices securely. One of reason of mobility is the freedom to use any device, right? Not every organisation has deployed SharePoint with OneDrive for Business to enable fidelity of documents on multiple devices. Work Folders allows your work documents to be available on all your devices from a centralized file share. So you create document on one device and consume it on a different device, while its fully backed up on your organizations file server.

In my next few posts, I'll talk about what are the other technologies from Microsoft helps you deliver an end to end Enterprise Mobility in your organization.

Okay.. After two years of asylum, I decided to come back to Blogosphere ( Homeland eh?) as I was finding 140 characters were too less to communicate my thoughts. If you’ve been following me on Twitter you know I have changed roles in Microsoft and now taken up role of Technology Solutions Specialist for Mobility and Devices.

As we all know how the proliferation of devices has completely changed the way we now live our lives. I don't even remember last time I took out my work laptop just to check my mails and reply few of those which needed my immediate attention and response. I am not just saying it because I work for worlds greatest technology company, its happening to everyone and in every Industry.

As I speak to lot of employees of other organizations as a part of my day to day job, they tell me that they don't want to be tied down to their seats and their PC anymore. they’d like to work wherever they are and whatever device they have.

Gone are those days when you have to drive to office on weekends just because you have to prepare an urgent business report that your boss have asked you to prepare on Friday evening and have to be submitted on Monday.If you are not one of those consider yourself lucky, privileged and blessed

As a Modern Employee, I need the flexibility to work from anywhere anytime and still be productive and contribute effectively to my and my organisation success and at the same time take care of my personal life, be with my family and friends when they need me.

I have seen people replying emails, chatting on IMs and even on call while waiting for a doctors consultations at a clinic on a working day. ( Too bad if you couldn't get a doctor’s appointment on a weekend )

Organizations understand that this is a new trend or is more sophisticatedly called “Consumerization of IT”. Whether they like it or not it’s happening. Many organizations are now considering adopting this trend and enabling their employees to be productive on the move. This allows a better employee satisfaction as they get more flexibility to work while taking care of other important “Life” things and Organizations are able to squeeze more productivity out of an employee which otherwise may not be possible while they are on their desk for 8-9 hours.

In the next few posts, I'll talk about how Microsoft is enabling mobile productivity for employees and as an Organization what do you really need to get best from your employees while they may not be necessarily on their desk.

I know I’ve been kind of away for an extended period from blogging, there has been quite a lot of things which kept me busy here at Microsoft, ofcourse changing role in the company was one of them. Now that I have quite settled down and started matching up with the pace of things here, I really look forward to resume my contribution here at blogsphere and share some interesting information with all of you.

If you were not hooked up to your twitter timeline or Live blogging sites about Microsoft Media Conference at Los Angeles yesterday, You can watch the Keynote session on demand where Microsoft announced Microsoft Surface Tablet devices for Windows RT and Windows 8 Pro.

This is the time of the year when anybody who works on Microsoft Virtualization and System Center technologies gets excited about Microsoft Management Summit which happens every year where thousands of IT PROs joins to share knowledge, exchange ideas, indulge in networking and get to do some deep dive technical learning on new technologies and make themselves aware about new innovations that are happening around Microsoft Virtualization and System Center Technologies.

Historically MMS has gained its reputation of a platform for major product announcements and launches, Last year at MMS 2011, we announced the availability of System Center 2012 Beta and discussed through our keynotes and sessions how it enables Microsoft Private Cloud Platform. It was really nice speaking and meeting lot of you last year at Mandalay Bay.

I am really excited about our upcoming MMS 2012 which is scheduled to be held from April 16 – 20, 2012 at The Venetian, Last Vegas for so many reasons.

We published the following abstract of Brad Anderson’s Keynote Speech to give you an insight what is stored for you in MMS 2012.

Day 1: Microsoft Private Cloud. Built for the Future. Ready Now.Cloud computing and the delivery of true IT as a Service is one of the most profound industry shifts in decades. Join Brad Anderson, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft’s Management and Security Division, as he shares Microsoft’s vision for cloud computing and shows how System ...Center 2012, as part of the Microsoft private cloud, will enable you to deliver the promise of cloud computing in your organization today.

Day 2: A World of Connected DevicesClouds and cloud-connected devices are changing the world of work and our daily interactions. Tech-savvy and always-connected, people want faster, more intuitive technology, uninterrupted services, and the freedom to work anywhere, anytime, on a variety of devices. Join Brad Anderson, Corporate Vice President of the Management and Security Division at Microsoft to learn how System Center 2012 and Windows Intune can help IT embrace this new reality today, and in the future, by making the right intelligent infrastructure investments.

I am also excited to present this year about all new capabilities of System Center 2012- Virtual Machine Manager with following objectives in mind.

To provide you a Technical Overview of new Virtualization and cloud management capabilities in VMM 2012 and how it solves todays administrator's pain points.

Make you aware about the things you can now do with VMM 2012 which you couldn’t do earlier with VMM 2008 R2

Empower you to deploy or upgrade to VMM 2012 with minimum effort.

You can get more information about the session below and if you are a registered attendee you should be able to add it to your Session builder.

In addition to the speaking opportunities, I would also be available to meet you all during "Speaker Q&A" session at the end of the day of the session and also at Microsoft Pavilion.

Since I work very closely with Microsoft partners, I would like to meet few of you and discuss how we can enable you to drive, develop and design System Center and Microsoft Private Cloud solutions for our customers.

Please use the Email Author link to drop me an email if you would like to meet, please mention your partner id so that I can get more information about your organization.

Description: Most of the organization today want to meet various security standards. But the auditor and IT security professionals struggle to keep the audit data at centralized location for later use. This session describes why security is important to organizations, how we can Meet regulatory compliance and Keep IT environment secure using SCOM 2007 ACS.

These sessions will be delivered through Microsoft Office Live Meeting with no extra cost, but time will be deducted from your available Partner Advisory Hours (Microsoft Partners are entitled to 10, 20, or 50 hours of Partner Technical Services Advisory Benefits based on your partner level or competencies.)

Please contact me or email askpts@microsoft.com with your Partner ID, and contact number if you need more information.

In case you need further information about the Partner Technical Services benefits,

I am happy to announce my first app for Windows Phone 7 is now available at Marketplace. I am not really a professional developer but I like coding and this time I took the opportunity to brush up some of my programming knowledge from my school and college days.

Please review and provide feedback at Marketplace. App is not perfect and there may be some bugs unhandled, so please report them I promise to work on them in my free time.

Be up to date with latest Bollywood news, gossips about your favourite Bollywood celebs, movie and music reviews from industry experts and previews of upcoming movies.

Also read what people talking about Bollywood on twitter with minute by minute updates.

You can share interesting articles with your friends and family through Email, Facebook and Twitter. If what you see on your screen is not enough, load the links to go directly to the website using your browser.

My team is delivering some great webinars on Microsoft System Center technologies. In our continuous effort to ramp up our Microsoft partners on Microsoft technologies we are bringing some interesting of 1:Many Technical Webinars.

If you are partner company focused on Systems management and networking and would like to learn more about new Management packs for System Center Operations Manager, I would strongly recommend you to attend the following webinar.

These sessions will be delivered through Microsoft Office Live Meeting with no extra cost, but time will be deducted from your available Partner Advisory Hours (Microsoft Partners are entitled to 10, 20, or 50 hours of Partner Technical Services Advisory Benefits based on your partner level or competencies.)

Please contact me or email askpts@microsoft.com with your Partner ID, and contact number if you need more information.

In case you need further information about the Partner Technical Services benefits,

In my last blog post, we saw how to create a Hyper V Cluster using the VMM 2012 cluster creation wizard as a part of preparing a fabric for the cloud.

Virtual Machine Manager 2012 also provides a feature by which you can manage updates for your virtual machine hosts, library servers, PXE servers, the Windows Server Update Management (WSUS) server, and the VMM server itself in the VMM console.

When you perform update remediation on a host cluster, VMM orchestrates the updates, in turn placing each cluster node in maintenance mode, migrating virtual machines off the host by using intelligent placement, and then installing the updates. If the cluster supports live migration of Windows Server-based virtual machines, live migration is used. If the cluster does not support live migration, VMM saves state for the virtual machines and does not migrate them.

To manage updates in VMM 2012, you need a WSUS server

Here are the prerequisites:

You must install the 64-bit version of Windows Server Update Server (WSUS) 3.0 Service Pack 2 (SP2).

Once you have configured the WSUS server, lets add the WSUS server in VMM 2012.

1. Open the Fabric workspace.

2. On the Home tab, in the Add group, click Add Resources, and then click Update Server.

3. My WSUS server name is sccm.dd181028.com, hence I have put SCCM as Computer name with port number and credentials.

4. Once the WSUS server is added, click on Synchronize to sync the WSUS updates with VMM.

5. You will all the update metadata showing on your VMM

Create Baseline

After you enable update management in VMM, you are ready to prepare for patching by configuring update baselines. An update baseline contains a set of required updates. During a compliance scan, computers that are assigned to a baseline are graded for compliance to their assigned baselines. After a computer is found noncompliant, an administrator brings the computer into compliance through update remediation.

6. Provide a Name and Description for your Baseline

7. Add the updates to your baseline against which your Hyper V hosts will be compared.

8. Assign the Baseline to the host groups.

9. Finish the wizard

10. You’ll see your newly created Baseline

To find out the compliance status for each baseline, you must scan the computer for compliance. When a computer is scanned for compliance, WSUS checks each update in the assigned update baselines to determine whether the update is applicable and, if the update is applicable, whether the update has been installed.

After a compliance scan, each update has a compliance status of Compliant, NonCompliant, Error, or Unknown.

To scan computers for compliance

1. In Compliance view of the Fabric workspace, select the computers that you want to scan.

2. On the Home tab, in the Compliance group, click Scan.

While the scan is in progress, the compliance status changes to Unknown. After the compliance scan completes, the computer's compliance status of each update is Compliant, NonCompliant, or Error.

To perform update remediations, the target computers must be noncompliant. To make a compliant computer noncompliant, you might need to use Add and Remove Programs to temporarily uninstall one or more of the updates listed in Compliance view.

On the Home tab, in the Compliance group, click Remediate. (The Remediate task is only available when the selected objects are noncompliant.)

If you select the host cluster by its cluster name, VMM orchestrates remediations of the hosts in the cluster.

VMM rolls through the host cluster, remediating one cluster node at a time. If a cluster node is compliant, VMM bypasses that node.

Before VMM begins remediating a host, it places the host in maintenance mode and migrates all virtual machines to other hosts in the cluster. If the cluster supports live migration, live migrations are performed. If the cluster does not support live migration, VMM saves state before migrating virtual machines.

If you prefer to restart the computers manually after remediation completes if any updates require a restart, select the Do not restart the servers after remediation check box.

Once the remediation is over, you’ll see your Hyper V cluster hosts as Compliant.

Hope this post was helpful for some of you who are evaluating VMM 2012 its update management feature.

In my next post, we’ll configure the rest of the fabric components like Logical Network, Storage and Load Balancers.

Before you start deploying cloud and services, we need to first start prepare the fabric.

A cloud can also host HA applications and services and we need to setup a Hyper V cluster to enable that. VMM 2012 has now introduced inbuilt capability of deploying Hyper V Clusters.

Fabric Prerequisites

Make sure that fabric configuration meets the following prerequisites:

To use shared storage that is under VMM management, storage must already be discovered and classified in the Fabric workspace of the VMM Administrator Console. Additionally, logical units that you want to use as shared storage must be created and assigned to the host group where the Hyper-V hosts are located.

To use shared storage that is not under VMM management, disks must be available to all nodes in the cluster before you can add them. Therefore, you must provision one or more logical units to all hosts that you want to cluster, and mount and format the storage disks on one of the hosts.

One or more logical networks that are common across all of the Hyper-V hosts that you want to cluster must be configured in the Fabric workspace of the VMM Administrator Console. Additionally, the logical networks must be associated with physical network adapters on each Hyper-V host. Be aware that you do not have to create external virtual networks on the Hyper-V hosts. External virtual networks are automatically created when you run the Create Cluster Wizard.

Although highly recommended, having a common logical network is not required to complete the wizard. You can configure virtual network settings for the cluster later. To do this, make sure that the logical networks that you want to use are associated with physical network adapters on each Hyper-V host. Then, in the Fabric workspace, right-click the host cluster, and then click Properties. In the ClusterName Properties dialog box, click the Virtual Networks tab, and then click Create to add the external virtual network. If there is a common logical network, the external virtual network will be automatically created on the cluster nodes.

I have been delivering a lot of sessions on the all-new VMM 2012 lately to both external and internal audiences, so I thought of sharing some information with our online community as well.

I am putting together a 3-part series of blog posts to cover all the aspects of VMM 2012 and how it enables Private Cloud Management. If you are new to Private Cloud concepts and its benefits, you may want to read some of my earlier posts on the same topic:

In March at the Microsoft Management Summit 2011 held in Las Vegas, we announced the public availability of VMM 2012 Beta. I know most of you are evaluating VMM 2012 in your environment and may need some guidance—hence this blog series.

When we talk about Private Cloud, we expect following benefits:

1. Reliability and predictability: We would want our application to be highly available and fault-tolerant, the remediation from failure should be simple, and it should be simple to re-start and re-deploy applications.

2. Highly automated: We want our infrastructure to be highly automated to complete tasks like provisioning new systems and configuring storage, networking, and applications on its own without any manual intervention.

3. Agility of speed: We would also expect better responsiveness and turnaround time to meet user needs. We want applications to be deployed faster, and changes to be made much easier and faster—not taking weeks to happen.

4. Focus of Applications and services: Let’s face it, at the end of the day the consumer only cares about applications and services, uptime, and quality of the service as a measure for success of your private cloud. So as a cloud consumer I would want to focus on the application rather than underlying infrastructure.

Today let’s go through a high-level overview of VMM 2012 and what kind of advanced management capabilities it brings to the table to for virtualized infrastructures and the Private Cloud.

Microsoft has made investments in 4 different areas in VMM 2012:

1. Deployment

HA VMM Server: VMM 2012 brings some enhanced deployment scenarios, where your VMM server itself is not cluster-aware, so now you can host VMM on a cluster and use the cluster name to connect your VMM console to the server.

Non-HA VMs on HA Host: Now you can create non-HA VMs on clustered hosts.

Cluster Creation: Now you can create Hyper-V® Host clusters directly from the VMM console itself, without having to go ahead and create clusters using Cluster Manager on the hosts. VMM Cluster creation also allows automated provisioning of storage and creation of CSV and virtual networks. You can even add or remove nodes, clusters, disks, and virtual network from existing clusters using VMM. You can also create clusters in untrusted domains.

MM now brings new custom properties not just for hosts, but also for components in VMM which can be really useful from a management perspective.

VMM also brings Windows PowerShell® 2.0 with new cmdlets to enable automation.

2. Fabric Management

Bare-metal provisioning: VMM now allows provisioning of bare-metal Hyper-V hosts. VMM can deploy the OS on the host, enable the Hyper-V role, and add it to the cluster and deploy VMs or Service—so the entire VM host lifecycle is now managed by the VMM itself… Isn't that cool? :)

Heterogeneous Virtualization Management: In addition to supporting VMware, VMM 2012 now also provides support to manage Citrix XenServer.

Logical Network: VMM now can help define Logical Networks using VLANs and Subnets by datacenter location, and also provides feature to manage static IPs, load-balancer VIPs, and MAC addresses. You can now automatically provision a load-balancer.

Storage Management: VMM now also connects and queries your storage boxes with SMI-S provided by storage vendors. It can discover storage arrays and pools, and discover capabilities and capacity of storage devices. It can now automatically configure and assign LUNs to hosts and clusters.

Updates Management: VMM now offers support for orchestrating the OS update process of clustered hosts. It integrates with WSUS and can now automatically update your cluster nodes without any service disruption to your VMs.

Dynamic Optimization: If you have worked with VMM 2008 R2, you know the PRO feature where you can move VMs around from one node to another within a cluster if there is any resource crunch on the host. It used to require Ops Manager integration, but VMM 2012 now provides built-in support for load optimization for Dynamic Optimization, and no longer requires Ops Manager. For other PRO capabilities, Ops Manager 2007 R2 and above are required.

Power Optimization: With Dynamic Optimization, VMM also offers Power Optimization. With this feature you can now consolidate VMs on fewer hosts and shut down the rest of the hosts in a cluster in order to save power—powering them up when the load on these VMs increases and requires spreading out.

Enhanced Placement: VMM now does over 100 placement checks before placing the VMs on the hosts. It also supports custom placement rules, e.g. when you want to deploy these VMs on the hosts with custom values of Server Room Third Floor. Now you can deploy multiple VMs as a part of a multi-tier service (e g: front-end web server, middle tier, and database tier).

3. Cloud Management: In VMM 2012, a private cloud provides the following benefits:

Self-service. Administrators can delegate management and usage of the cloud while retaining the opaque usage model. Cloud users do not need to ask the cloud provider for administrative changes beyond increasing capacity and quotas as their needs change.

Resource pooling. Through the cloud, administrators can collect and present an aggregate set of resources, such as storage and networking resources. Resource usage is limited by the capacity of the cloud and by user role quotas.

Opacity. Cloud users have no knowledge of the underlying physical resources.

Elasticity. Administrators can add resources to a cloud to increase the capacity.

Optimization. Usage of the underlying resources is continually optimized without affecting the overall cloud user experience.

4. Services Management: It’s not VM Management anymore. Now with VMM you can deploy and manage multi-tier applications across multiple servers as a single unit. Scale out the service with minimal effort based on demand.

We'll discuss some of these great details in my new few blog posts and will also see how to deploy some of these. Stay tuned!

Finally I bought my own domain name which was pending for quite some time now. I was surprised to see even though my name is quite a common name, nobody has acquired it yet and I didn’t want to leave this opportunity to let it go to anybody else.

I am really a great fan of DirectAccess and use it all the time to connect back to my corporate network when I am at home, traveling and sometimes even when I am on vacation .

I know being a Infrastructure consultant, I do not cover much on core Windows Server technologies like BranchCache and DirectAccess which are equally interesting as Virtualization. Thankfully I have some great colleagues who are passionate about these core technologies and working really hard to help customers and partners to realize the value of some of these new features which we added in Windows Server 2008 R2 and also enabling them to deploy and configure them effectively.

Microsoft Partners, if you have joined our web seminar today for Datacenter Automation using System Center : Part 1, you must have seen some cool demos how you can do an automated provisioning of Virtual Machines by triggering a workflow from System Center Service Manager and using Opalis to initiate a VM creation using VMM 2008 R2.

Part 2 of the series will be webcast live on 27th May 2010, I would strongly recommend you to join the session

Join the PTS team in part two of "Datacenter Automation Using System Center." This session will help IT professionals optimize their technology, investments, and staff and also help them simplify data center management. Customer pain points and automation scenarios will be discussed.

IT is always under constant pressure to contain and in many cases reduce costs. Much of the work performed today in Datacenter is manual involving multiple teams. In addition to the time, risk and latency the manual approach introduces, another huge concern for IT is the inability to scale. This session will help the IT professionals a path to optimize their technology investments, staff and simplify the datacenter management

In this session, you’ll see a automatic consolidation of your physical server into Virtual Machines done by VMM 2008 R2 by triggering a workflow from Service Manager and few other cool demos

If you are a Microsoft Partner, you are entitled to free competitive presales assistance and advisory services each year. Partners have access to 10, 20, or 50 hours of advisory assistance based on their partner level or competencies. Its time to leverage your Partner Advisory Hours to accelerate your business cycle and win at marketplace.

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is getting momentum and more and more organizations are looking at VDI to provide Operating system environment to their users.

One of the challenges that VDI is facing today is to be able to provide the same graphic experience of desktop Operating system as they have today on their physical PC.

E.g:

Amazing Windows 7 Aero features

To be able to run 3D applications

Silverlight and Flash video etc.

If you are following this blog and read my previous posts about features like RemoteFX and Dynamic Memory brought in by Service Pack 1 for Windows Server 2008 R2, you probably already know what is RemoteFX.

In layman’s term, RemoteFX extends the capabilities of GPU on your server hardware into your Virtual Machines running Windows 7 so that you can get rich graphic capabilities which are on par of a physical desktop running Windows 7.

It leverages the power of virtualized graphics resources and advanced codecs to recreate the fidelity of hardware-assisted graphics acceleration, including support for 3D content and Windows Aero, on a remote user’s device. This allows for a local-like, remote experience.

RemoteFX USB Device Redirection

RemoteFX also provides awesome Device Redirection of Virtually any USB devices, some of the features are:

Redirects devices at the USB Request Block (URB) Level.

No client drivers necessary

One method that works with many devices

Only one session can use a USB device at a time

Optimized for the LAN

Microsoft has recently released bunch of documents on Remote FX deployment and I would like collate all these documentations right here for you.

Before I take you through the documentations, let me touch briefly on the deployment guidelines of RemoteFX.

RemoteFX for VDI is targeted at new deployments, so your existing Server Hardware, processor, GPU and OS may not really work with RemoteFX. It requires latest hardware:

This white paper is intended as a guide for capacity planning of Microsoft RemoteFX in Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1. It describes the most relevant factors that influence the capacity of a given deployment, methodologies to evaluate capacity for specific deployments, and a set of experimental results for different combinations of usage scenarios and hardware configurations.

This step-by-step guide walks you through the process of setting up a working virtual desktop that uses RemoteFX and is accessible by using Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) in a test environment. Upon completion of this step-by-step guide, you will have a virtual desktop with RemoteFX that can be connected to by using Remote Desktop Connection. You can then test and verify this functionality by connecting to the virtual desktop from a client computer as a standard user.

This step-by-step guide walks you through the process of setting up a working virtual desktop pool that uses RemoteFX in a test environment. Upon completion of this step-by-step guide, you will have a virtual desktop pool with RemoteFX that users can connect to by using RD Web Access.

This step-by-step guide walks you through the process of setting up a working personal virtual desktop that uses RemoteFX in a test environment.Upon completion of this step-by-step guide, you will have a personal virtual desktop with RemoteFX assigned to a user account that can connect by using RD Web Access. You can then test and verify this functionality by connecting to the personal virtual desktop from RD Web Access as a standard user.

This step-by-step guide walks you through the process of setting up USB redirection with RemoteFX in a test environment. Upon completion of this step-by-step guide, you will have a personal virtual desktop with RemoteFX assigned to a user account that can connect by using RD Web Access.

This paper provides an architectural overview of RemoteFX in the context of session virtualization—using a new Windows Server role called the Remote Desktop Session Host (RD Session Host) designed specifically for modern session virtualization environments using Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1.

This is again a part of year where Microsoft reaches out to all its customers, partners, IT Pros and developers through its back to back technical conferences with some great announcements, Technical Sessions and demonstrations of its latest and cutting edge products and solutions.

MMS 2011 too expected to be all about Private Cloud, Datacenter Automation and Virtualization Management. The products which I am really looking forward to at MMS this year is VMM 2012, Opalis and Service Manager

I’ll be working at MMS 2011 in Las Vegas next week as a Microsoft Speaker and product specialist for Virtual Machine Manager 2012. All you partners, customers and IT Pros, Virtualization enthusiasts who are interested in Next Gen capabilities of Virtual Machine Manager 2012 and learn how it helps creating and doing end to end management of Private Cloud can meet me at VMM Booth at Microsoft Pavilion.

In addition to my booth duty, I am really looking forward to meet and present to and some of customers, partners whom I work with and discuss their Virtualization and Private Cloud Practice, also hanging out with some old friends and explore Vegas..

As you all know that SP1 for Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 just gone RTM adding two new virtualization capabilities: Dynamic Memory and RemoteFX

Let’s first understand these capabilities in details.

Dynamic Memory: An enhancement to Hyper-V R2, Dynamic Memory pools all the memory available on a physical host. Dynamic Memory then dynamically distributes available memory, as it is needed, to virtual machines running on that host. Then with Dynamic Memory Balancing, virtual machines will be able to receive new memory allocations, based on changes in workload, without a service interruption.

RemoteFX: Microsoft RemoteFX leverages the power of virtualized graphics resources and advanced codecs to recreate the fidelity of hardware-assisted graphics acceleration, including support for 3D content and Windows Aero, on a remote user’s device. This allows for a local-like, remote experience.

In the light of new features, service Pack 1 will also be released for VMM 2008 R2 to manage Dynamic Memory and RemoteFX on multiple Hyper V Servers from a single pane of glass.

Lets understand the requirements on your Hyper V hosts and VMs to be able to manage by VMM 2008 R2.

System Requirement for Manage Dynamic Memory:

Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Host

Supported Operating System in the VM

Upgrade Integration Services in the VM

RemoteFX Requirements on Hosts

CPU must support SLAT

One or more GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) that support DirectX 10

Enough GPU Memory available for max monitors and resolution

RemoteFX feature enabled under the Remote Desktop Services Role

RemoteFX requirements on VMs

Supported Operating System in the VM

New Integration Services (part of Windows 7 SP1)

Can be combined with Dynamic Memory

VMM 2008 R2 SP1 now has settings to manage Dynamic Memory setting of VMs which are as follows:

Startup Memory (8 to 65536 MB)

Maximum Memory (8 to 65536 MB)

Memory Buffer (0 to 95%)

Memory Priority

Normal, Low, High

Custom (0 – 10000)

To manage the RemoteFX , following settings have been added

Default Standard video adapter

New RemoteFX 3D video adapter

Maximum number of monitors: 1,2,3,4

Max monitor resolution

o 1024x768 (4 monitors max)

o 1280x1024 (4 monitors max)

o 1600x1200 (3 monitors max)

o 1920x1200 (2 monitors max)

Additional VM property

GPU ID (PowerShell only)

Since RemoteFX requires you to have SLAT CPU and specific GPU and available GPU memory, VMM 2008 R2 SP1 will also let you identify the following on the hosts.

1.CPU Supports SLAT

2.GPU and available Memory

3.Intelligent Placement

While creating a new VM or migrating a new VM from one host to another, VMM 2008 R2 SP1 added new check for Dynamic Memory and RemoteFX in the Intelligent placement.

o Use Current Memory footprint for DM VMs on hosts: While doing the migration or creating new VM, VMM will check how much is the current memory the VM is running with, for E.g, you have specified startup memory as 1 GB and max memory as 6 GB but at the time of migration the VM is running at 2 GB memory. In that case, VMM will check if the other host has at least 2 GB free memory to be able to migrate this VM.

o Check for GPU-compatibility when migrating RemoteFX VMs : While migrating a RemoteFX based VM, VMM 2008 R2 checks if identical GPU is available on the other hosts with required memory, Remote FX should be enabled in RDS.

4. Updates to Performance and Resource Optimization

PRO ties specific Operations Manager alerts to remediation actions in VMM, VMM moves a load-balance VMs in a cluster when CPU or Memory exceed a threshold. SP1 update to VMM PRO Pack a consider Current Memory utilization and not the fixed memory for DM VMs and matches it with the memory available on the other nodes.

R2 Agents are supported in SP1, no need to re-deploy agents to Hosts and Library Servers

Upgrade the Integration components on all the VMs.

VMM 2008 R2 SP1 will take the virtualization management to a whole new level and is scheduled to be released within 30 days of SP1 released by the Windows Server Team. So we can expect it sometime next month.

I hope this post was of some help for those who are expecting VMM to be able to manage Dynamic Memory and RemoteFX on multiple hosts from a single console instead of managing it locally using Hyper V manager on each box.

As you know, the PTS teams are available to help you accelerate your sales cycle, win against the competition, reduce development costs, lessen your time-to-market, and architect and deploy successful solutions.

Partner Technical Services is now offering a workshop on how to deploy Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) using Remote Desktop Services (RDS).

Session Content:

Day 1:

Why Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)?

Introducing Remote Desktop Services (RDS).

Day 2:

Step by Step Deployment

Integration with APP-V

Description:

This session is targeted to Microsoft Partners who are selling, designing, and deploying the VDI solution to their customers. This session will cover Microsoft VDI Stack; and provide a step by step guide for deploying Personal Virtual Desktop and Pooled Virtual Desktop. We will use the RDS tool from Windows Server 2008 R2, and APP-V to deploy applications in those Virtual Desktops.

These sessions will be delivered through Microsoft Office Live Meeting with no extra cost, but time will be deducted from your available Partner Advisory Hours (Microsoft Partners are entitled to 10, 20, or 50 hours of Partner Technical Services Advisory Benefits based on your partner level or competencies.)

Please contact me or email askpts@microsoft.com with your Partner ID, and contact information. The Event dates and timing will be sent to the registered partners later.

At this time this offering is only available to Microsoft Partners in North America.

In case you need further information about the Partner Technical Services benefits,